chickpeas | Cadry's Kitchen

buffalo chickpea salad sandwiches Once upon a time in a life that was mine but looked very different than mine does now, I was no stranger to diner booths. I was there for after-hours with theatre buddies. It was my go-to place for Thanksgiving pie. After a night of dancing, that was where I grabbed some appetizers. And when it came to their menu, if it was fried and battered, I probably had it and I probably liked it. If it included buffalo sauce generously co-mingling with ranch dressing, I definitely did.

Nowadays, diners don’t hold much of a draw for me for obvious reasons. I could probably scrape by at most places with a plain baked potato or iceberg lettuce dinner salad, but why bother? Plus, the scent of fried chickens’ eggs and old grease smells nauseating instead of appetizing. So what’s a buffalo sauce and ranch loving person to do?

Luckily, buffalo sauce need not be relegated to the proverbial closet to sit with three-inch high hair styles, stone-washed jeans, and re-runs of Doogie Howser, M.D. It may come as a surprise, but it seems almost every vegan food blog has a buffalo recipe, while letting the chickens keep the wings for themselves.

Cara at Fork and Beans has mouthwatering Baked Buffalo Tempeh Tenders and Kittee at Cake Maker to the Stars has eye-catching Rice Paper Rolls stuffed with Buffalo Soy Curls. Kristy at Keepin’ It Kind has Buffalo Cauliflower Pizza, which has piqued my interest for months. (When I was in Los Angeles recently I was able to try out the buffalo cauliflower from Mohawk Bend. Fantastic.) And in fact, while I was in the process of writing this recipe and post, Erin at Olives for Dinner posted an amazing looking Buffalo Chickpea Taco recipe. The vegan world is overflowing in buffalo sauce!

My contribution into the world of buffalo-spiked goodness are these Buffalo Chickpea Salad Sandwiches. The sandwiches are a combination of buffalo chickpeas and classic (eggless) mayo-based salad sandwiches. In this sandwich Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, my preferred hot sauce when it comes to all things buffalo, mixes with the elements of ranch dressing for one messy conglomeration.

This sandwich can be made two ways. One option is the lazy person’s method, which takes just 5 minutes to put together. The other option is only slightly more involved, delivering a hot sandwich with roasted chickpeas, and still only clocking in at 25 minutes. This sandwich would be a terrific option for a Saturday afternoon, a cold packed lunch, a picnic possibility, or really anytime when you need something hot and spicy in your life.

Buffalo Chickpea Salad Sandwiches

Serves 4

Buffalo Ranch Sauce

¼ cup eggless mayonnaise
3 Tablespoons hot sauce (Frank’s Red Hot Sauce is my preferred sauce for buffalo anything)
¼ teaspoon onion powder
¼ teaspoon celery seed
¼ teaspoon dried dill
1 stalk celery, chopped small

In a medium-sized bowl, stir the eggless mayonnaise, hot sauce, onion powder, celery seed, and dried dill until fully combined. Stir in the chopped celery.

Roasted Chickpeas

1 ½ cups chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil (Omit for 5 minute version)
1 teaspoon nutritional yeast flakes (Omit for 5 minute version)

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Put the chickpeas onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Drizzle the extra virgin olive oil and nutritional yeast flakes onto the chickpeas and combine. Spread the chickpeas across the parchment paper for even roasting. Roast for 15 minutes, stopping once half way through to shake the pan and move the chickpeas for even roasting.

Add the warm chickpeas to the bowl with the buffalo sauce and fully combine. Put the buffalo chickpea salad on any of the suggested bread options & top it with any of the suggested condiments.

Suggested bread options: Buns, tortillas, or forgo the bread altogether and stuff the buffalo chickpea salad into endive cups or romaine lettuce leaves

Suggested condiments: Pickles, mustard, onions, lettuce

Five minute version: Don’t bother roasting the chickpeas. Instead, skip over the roasting section, add the drained and rinsed chickpeas into the bowl with the buffalo sauce, and combine until fully coated. If desired, warm the chickpea mixture in a pot on the stove or in the microwave before adding it to one of the suggested bread options & topping it with any of the suggested condiments.

It is very rare that a cookbook comes along that elicits the kind of excitement and bold punch of flavor that Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day by Celine Steen and Tamasin Noyes has done. For the longest time I read as blogger after blogger photographed gorgeous sandwiches and penned rave reviews, while I watched on with my mouth watering. Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day moved higher and higher on my Christmas wish list. And I waited eagerly for the time when I’d be making puff pastry pot pie sandwiches, tofu pomegranate pockets, and sauerkraut & tempeh-filled bierocks. Then as luck would have it, I won a copy in a giveaway hosted by Olives for Dinner, and my wait time was cut short.

As soon as I flipped through all of the stunning recipes with loads of pictures, I felt an excited stirring in my stomach. I wanted to make everything… now. I never would have guessed that a book on something as basic as the sandwich could deliver so much flavor and creativity. With 101 sandwiches from breakfast through dessert, these sandwiches are far from ordinary. Here’s what I’ve made so far…

The first recipe I tried was the Chickpea Shawarma. I would consider this recipe to be Indian/Mediterranean fusion, because the chickpeas are spiced with curry powder in addition to apple cider vinegar, fresh lemon juice, non-dairy yogurt, garlic, and onion powder. (Hot curry powder from Penzey’s Spices is my favorite.) The chickpeas are baked in the sauce until it’s mostly absorbed and then served in a pita or tortilla with lettuce and tomatoes. (The smell of curry permeating the air made the house smell fantastic.) It’s then topped with a creamy tahini and non-dairy yogurt dressing.

The recipe makes a lot of dressing, more than I thought I could use in a week… But I was wrong, because the next day I generously offered to finish off the remaining chickpeas, only to have my husband ask if we could make more so that he could have some too. So for breakfast, there we were having a full batch of chickpea shawarma all over again with more tahini sauce. Then a few days later we were craving it anew, and I was only too happy to have the tahini sauce on hand, and with that, we finished it off. So if you plan on making the shawarma once, you might want to halve the recipe, but then again, you might not! I also want to add that David is generally not into sauces, especially ones made with yogurt, and he thought the sauce was the best part. The cool, sour tang complements the spicy heat of the curried chickpeas.

Next I made the Carnitas Sandwiches. The carnitas in this sandwich are made with jackfruit. (Jackfruit always intrigues me, whether it’s in tacos, Nepali cuisine, or vegan crab cakes.) The carnitas require some pre-planning, because the jackfruit cooks in a mixture of orange juice, tamari, hot sauce, and spices for an hour on the stove. (Water is also added to cover the jackfruit, and I think I added a bit too much. The directions say to cover the jackfruit by a couple of inches, but my shredded jackfruit just kept floating. Next time I’ll err on the side of less rather than more, so that the flavor isn’t diffused.)

After an hour of cooking, the jackfruit marinates in the cooking liquid overnight. Then it’s browned in a pan with shallots and garlic. Next time I plan on browning the jackfruit in batches, because my pan was too overcrowded with the chilled jackfruit to brown properly.

The sandwich is topped with guacamole (or avocado in my case) and chili crème made with silken tofu, lime juice, and spices. The sandwich was very tasty with a mixture of spicy hot and cool.

Finally, I harnessed my inner Elvis with Peanut Butter Banana Bacon Sandwiches. The absolute standout in this sandwich is the chickpea bacon, made by broiling chickpeas in maple syrup, apple cider vinegar, smoked paprika, smoked sea salt, liquid smoke, and spices. The chickpeas become smoky, sticky sweet and totally addictive. I used less liquid smoke than the recipe indicated (I used ½ teaspoon), because my preferred brand of liquid smoke (Wright’s) is concentrated. The chickpea bacon, peanut butter, and bananas made for an unusual twist on one of my favorite breakfasts.

Even when I’m not making this sandwich, I know that the chickpea bacon is going to be a recipe I turn to again and again for chef salads, BLT’s, and to put on potato soup or baked potato skins. I had a hard time staying out of them in the refrigerator, because they taste so good on their own, by the handful. I’ve already made the chickpea bacon a second time, and this time I made a double batch so that I can put them on everything with abandon.